November 28 2011 Roots of Acute Worsening in ILD Elusive

HONOLULU – Acute worsening is an important part of the natural history of many interstitial lung diseases, especially idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

But the roots of acute worsening in interstitial lung disease (ILD) are not fully understood, Dr. Harold R. Collard said at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.

“A lot of what’s known in the medical literature comes from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis [IPF],” said Dr. Collard, who directs the interstitial lung disease program at the University of California, San Francisco. “I think it’s an open question whether that can be extrapolated to patients with other forms of ILD or not. The course of many ILDs – certainly IPF – is unpredictable; it’s not always a linear decline,” he continued. “This is an important shift in how we think about the disease – to recognize that this is the case for many patients.”
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